Category Archives: Silly hardware posts

I recently joined an online forum for aficionados of Mercedes SLK cars. I happen to own an early model, a 2001 SLK230. It’s a sporty, two-door, four-cylinder supercharged roadster, with a six speed manual transmission, and a load of fun. It’s what got me across the country, and may someday take me to Mexico City. I just submitted this post to my SLK club, and thought I’d re-post it here.

After what seemed like endless days of gray, rainy weather, the morning dawned looking like it’d be yet another rerun of gloom. But by noon, the sky had mostly cleared, the pavement was dry, the temperature had reached the mid-60’s, and I could hear my SLK whispering softly from the garage,

“C’mon…it’s nice. Take me out! Take the top down and find a twisty road where we can let loose and strut our stuff.”

Twisty Roads West of Redding, CA

How could I resist? After just a few of those whispers, my will gave out, and by two o’clock, I was on the road, top down. Heading north through Redding, California on highway 273, I could see the lower Cascade mountains off to the east, crowned by the regal Mount Lassen. To the west, where I was headed, the coastal mountains that separate the northern tip of the San Joaquin valley from the Pacific Ocean beckoned me.

Before leaving, I had done a little research on Google Maps. Though it was virgin terrain for me, it looked promising: mountains, tiny roads, lakes and streams. Surely there would be some exciting driving ahead.

Where the Twisties Get Serious

I turned left at Buenaventura Avenue, but hit a red light almost immediately. A white Buick Riviera with an elderly driver sat to my right. Ahead, the road narrowed to one lane in each direction. “I gotta get ahead of her, or this mountain road is going to be nothing more than an exercise in frustration,” I murmured to myself. I could see the opposing light turn yellow, and I depressed the clutch, engaged first gear, and got ready. Green! I let out the clutch, pressed the accelerator to the floor, and listened with glee as the whir of the supercharger rose to a whine. I jammed it into second and hit the first curve with gusto. Soon I was in third and the Riviera was just a bad memory.

Yes! I was now flying up the hill with the wind in my hair, no one ahead of me, and the road racing up to greet my tires. After a few sweeping curves, I crested the hill and hit Placer Road. There I made a left. Placer Road is a broad, two-lane country highway with gentle turns running through rolling hills. Though not a particularly technical or twisty drive, it’s pleasant place to zoom through with the top down. As I drove, the houses thinned out to be replaced with farms, cows, and open grasslands dotted with gnarled old oaks, still leafless from the winter. I could see their twisted silhouettes against the cloud-flecked sky, and felt glad to be alive.

This part of Northern California is the transition zone between the valley and the mountains. So there are wide meadows dotted mostly with oaks. It’s mainly cattle country, with little other farming. The terrain is hilly, and as you get farther from the valley, begins to get steep.

Parked by the Clear Creek Bridge

After a few miles of gentle curves, rises and falls, I crossed Clear Creek Bridge. I stopped to take a picture of the car next to it. The bridge was surprisingly high, and I’d estimate the creek was about a hundred feet below. By this point, Mr. SLK was happy. His engine was purring softly, and his suspension had just gotten warmed up. But he wanted more than Placer Drive. “Find me a twisty side road,” he softly begged me. “C’mon, we can find somewhere where we can really have some fun.”

Muletown Road is Calling Me

Who was I to say no? So I got back in and drove on. Shortly I found Muletown Road. The sign warned that it was twisty and that the pavement would end in three miles. “That sounds like fun!,” I thought to myself as I pointed the SLK down the country road. I was not disappointed. The pavement, though smooth, was not wide, and there was no center line. There were some houses along the way, but it was mostly desolate countryside. Though a small and twisty road, I managed to keep the car in third gear, with about 2,500 RPMs, which meant I was keeping a speed around 30-40 MPH. At one point, I nearly planted it into an embankment, but a quick stab at the brake followed by a deft move of the steering set me back on course and I continued without incident. Off to the side of the road, I spotted a flock of wild turkeys and stopped to take a photo. I’d seen these birds many times around my home in Boston, but I was surprised to find them here. Camera shy, they quickly disappeared into the underbrush.

Wild Turkeys in California. Who knew?

After a few miles, a sign warned that the pavement was ending. At this point, I also encountered a young family. Because I had learned to drive on twisty dirt roads, I wasn’t fazed by the idea of no pavement. But I asked the family if the road was public. They took one look at my car and said, “You won’t make it in that. If we have to go on that road, we take our large four-wheel drive truck. You’re probably best off just going back.”

“Makes sense. I guess I’ll follow your advice then,” I said, and turned around, the tiny turning radius of the car coming in handy yet again. God, I love this car! The ride back to Placer Road was all the better since I now knew what to expect. I hit the twisties with greater vigor, and soon I was back on the highway and continued on. After another couple of miles, Placer Road turned into South Fork road.

The road then narrowed and began to wind. Though I saw the occasional other car, they were few, and fortunately going the other way. I would have quickly caught up with anyone going the same direction.

Where Zogg Mine Road and South Fork Road Meet

Suddenly I saw Zogg Mine road, and it looked like Muletown road, only better. A dire warning was posted at the entrance: “Narrow Winding Road. Road ends in 4.6 Mi. Trucks Not Advised. NO TURNAROUND.” “Well, in my little car, that last bit shouldn’t be a problem,” I thought. “Sounds like fun, in fact.”

Fortunately, I saw no cows on the road

I turned right, and my next adventure began. I immediately crested a small hill, and then the road narrowed dramatically. The center line disappeared, and all I could see were hills, trees, grass, and the road disappearing off into the distance. “Yes! Pay dirt,” I thought with glee.

As I raced along, I could feel the suspension working overtime. The turns were narrow and banked, often the wrong way. As the turns shifted direction, the banking reversed. The road went up and down, and as I zoomed along I felt like I was on the back of a bucking bronco. But the SLK’s suspension ate it all up with aplomb, keeping the car firmly planted without shaking my teeth out.

On the straight part of Zogg Mine Road

Since my car is the 230 with only a four cylinder engine (not a six), it has nearly perfect 50/50 weight balance. Thus the handling is incredibly neutral and forgiving. It’s almost impossible to make the tires squeal, and even with the traction control off, it takes persistence to spin the tail. Incredibly, I was able to do most of this road in third gear, again maintaining a speed between the low 30’s and the mid-40’s. Since I didn’t know the road, I had to be a bit careful, but it was an exhilarating ride nonetheless.

Alone in the mountains next to a swollen creek.

As I got higher into the mountain, the trees got thicker, and soon I was driving under a forest canopy. The occasional house went by in a blur, but I was mostly alone on this wonderful country road. Soon, I saw a waterfall to my right, and then a babbling creek to my left. I stopped to take photos.

After a few more miles, I got to the end of the road, which rather suddenly turned into someone’s driveway. It was only by slamming the brakes that I managed to not end up on the guy’s porch. Jeeze, there really was no place to turn around. By then, the road was maybe eight feet across. Since the driveway was literally festooned with “No Trespassing” signs, I didn’t want to ask if I could turn around in the guy’s driveway. So I ended up backing up about fifty feet before I could turn around. “Man, that warning sign wasn’t kidding,” I thought.

By then it was about four thirty, and I knew it was time to think about getting home. I had promised to cook dinner for my elderly mother, and I knew she’d be hungry. As I headed back, I reflected back on the drive. It had been a perfect afternoon, with temps in the 60’s, top down, few cars on the road, and some really fine twisties. I counted myself a lucky man as I headed back along Placer Road, and then back onto the interstate.

Toward the end of a beautiful country drive

Since I’m still stuck here in Redding, I can hardly wait for my next chance to explore more of these country roads.

As I sit here writing this blog post, not thirty feet from me sit not only one, but two parked Rolls Royces. This is curious for fairly obvious reasons. I’m in a nice neighborhood, but not a super-rich one. In my neighborhood in Boston, a far wealthier place, no one has a Rolls. And I seldom see anyone driving one in Boston, though it’s not uncommon to see Bentley Continental GTs, Ferraris, Maseratis, and other super-expensive cars. But the Rolls Royces, if they exist there (and they surely do) are remarkably shy about showing their Spirts of Ecstasy. And here? I’ve never once seen one on the street anywhere in Mexico.

One of the Rolls Royces here, an ’87 Silver Spirit, belongs to my landlord Rafael, and is parked in the courtyard. I pass by it every day. The other one, an early 70’s Silver Cloud II belongs to his friend, Tony, and is parked on the street, where it has sat unbothered for a couple of weeks now. Rafael borrowed it a while ago, because for a spell he had no working cars, and needed something to get around in.

At the time he borrowed his friend’s Roller, Rafael was in possession of approximately five, non-functioning vehicles: the Rolls; a Pontiac Fiero in the workshop that’s in the process of being converted into a Testarossa lookalike; a late 90’s Range Rover, which is his daily driver and most recent casualty to mechanical failure; a Lamborghini Murcielago parked out front, which lacks an engine among other critical parts; and a large, graffiti-covered van/bread truck, also parked on the street. The bread truck looks abandoned, but it’s not.

Tony’s Rolls Royce

Of the bunch, the Rolls is the most interesting, or at least the most storied. When I first rented the place, I noted the Rolls’ presence. It was covered with dust and apparently not working, a sad testimony to bygone better times. As I got to know Rafael, I came to learn the Roller’s colorful history.

He bought it six years ago in Miami and drove it from there to Mexico City. With an EPA-rated 10 MPG highway mileage, I’m sure it was an expensive trip. Gasoline at the time was fetching around $4 USD/gallon. I marveled at the sheer chutzpah of such a trip and asked him if he wasn’t nervous about crossing the border in a Rolls. At the time, sometime in 2010, the northern states of Mexico were a virtual battleground between various drug gangs and other criminals, the police, and the Mexican military. Ciudad Juarez was more dangerous than Baghdad, and large parts of it had been deserted. The border area didn’t seem like an auspicious place to drive through in a Rolls Royce, even if it wasn’t new. But Rafael was undeterred and sailed through with nary a problem. Hearing this only made me feel a little ridiculous remembering my own fears about such a border crossing. In the spring of 2014, a much calmer time, I also crossed the border, only I was in a rusty 1989 Toyota pickup. Ha!

The Spirit of Ecstasy

For a few years, life with the Rolls was automotive bliss. Rafael drove it around Mexico City without incident, either mechanical or otherwise, though he did have a few adventures. One day he was out in the Rolls with one of my predecessors, a Swiss guy who had rented one of his units. As they were driving around one late afternoon, Rafael got lost. I’m not quite sure how this happened as Rafael is a Mexico City native and seems to know all the backroads. But they ended up in some iffy neighborhoods, and the Swiss guy began to get nervous. After all, there are plenty of places in the USA where you probably wouldn’t want to take your Rolls. A questionable barrio in Mexico City? Yeah, I’d be nervous too, especially given the danger of being stopped for long periods in the ever-present traffic. But apparently Rafael laughed off any notion of danger, much to the Swiss guy’s chagrin.

One of the more notorious iffy barrios here is Tepito, just North of the Centro Historico. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been warned by people, especially my ex, “F,” not to go anywhere near Tepito. “They’ll rob you down to your underwear there, and you’ll leave nearly naked. That is if you’re still alive.” Those were the kind of anecdotes F loved regaling me with. As a result, I’ve always steered clear of Tepito.

Well, Tepito is exactly where Rafael and the Swiss guy ended up in the Rolls. At this point, according to Rafael, the Swiss guy was in a state of near-panic. But of course he couldn’t abandon ship, because that would only have been falling out of a very plush frying pan and into the fire. And then a very strange thing happened. People started making way for the Rolls, pushing pedestrians out of the street, saluting Rafael and the Swiss guy, and cheering. Apparently they thought he was one of the BIG bosses, come to check up on his network of pirated DVD sellers or some such errand. And soon Rafael found his bearings, and he and the Swiss guy floated to safety without so much as a scuff to the Rolls.

For years Rafael has driven the Rolls all over the city with nary a problem, something that still amazes this Gringo every time he thinks of it. Sadly, this automotively blessed state of affairs ended about two years ago. The Rolls fell under some kind of mysterious mechanical malaise and stopped working. Rafael was forced back into the relative penury of his Range Rover.

Elegant Decay

As you might imagine, finding a competent Rolls mechanic in Mexico City is even harder than finding some oddball type of Gringo convenience food. And to put it politely, Rafael tends to bargain hard when he buys things, which ruled out taking it to the Rolls Royce dealership in Polanco. So the Rolls then spent months and months and months shuttling between various incompetent mechanics, losing bits and pieces along the way, but never regaining its ability to elegantly glide over the potholed streets of Mexico City. After several mechanics who could not deliver the goods of functionality, it was finally towed back here where it sat for a maybe another year before I rented my unit.

Sad, dust-covered, and dejected is how I came to know Rafael’s Rolls. But little did I know that I was to become a player in the Rolls Royce Resuscitation Project. But that’s a tale for another post. For now, saludos and thanks for stopping by.

I’ve discovered the secret purpose of the various bits of infrastructure in my apartment here in Mexico City: it’s to make me look like a fool. This only dawned on me yesterday, but the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that I’m right. And I’m feeling pretty foolish right about now. Circumstances are making me look bad. Not merely bad, but kind of high-maintenance, whiny bad. If you’re a guy who considers himself pretty handy around the house, this isn’t a good thing.

By infrastructure, I really mean plumbing and electricity. Shockingly, electricity was the first to ambush me. Shortly after moving in, the power went out early one morning. Noting that the electricity was on elsewhere in the building, I went to the breaker box to reset it. It didn’t appear to have been tripped, but I flipped the switch anyway. Nothing happened. I tried a couple of more times, again with the same result. So I broke down and called Rafael, my landlord and explained the situation. He came out in his pajamas, flipped the circuit breaker on and off once, and Lo! There was electricity. I was mortified and apologized while simultaneously re-explaining that I had done the very same thing.

Some months later, after more power failures, and some alarming sizzling sounds coming from the breaker box, we found out what the problem was. The circuit breaker itself had a loose connection inside the box. Once replaced, it has worked fine ever since. Though I was indeed vindicated, the fact of the matter is that impressions of idiocy don’t really wear off that fast. Especially when they keep getting refreshed.

So once the electricity left off tormenting me, the plumbing took over. Take the water supply, for example. In my apartment it stops with alarming regularity. Of course it’s the typical, failure-prone Mexican system, where water slowly flows from the city pipes into a cistern under the patio. From there it’s pumped up to a tinaco on the roof from where it flows leisurely into the pipes via gravity. The whole setup runs on electricity and a set of cantankerous float valves, electrical sensors, and relays, all of which suffer from the same “Transylvanian” maintenance schedule. Which is to say that they are replaced or serviced only after they fail. Of course when there’s no electricity, the whole system runs on borrowed time anyway.

Only a few weeks after my electrical run-in, the water stopped and I called Rafael: “I don’t have any water.”

“Don’t worry; the system is back on. You should have water in 20 minutes,” he replied confidently. I was relieved he was already onto the problem. Twenty minutes later, I tried the faucets. No water. I merely heard a gentle sucking sound. The system was pulling in air as water somewhere below me flowed out. I tried all the faucets. Same result. I waited another five minutes and tried again. Same result again. So I went downstairs to talk to Rafael, who happened to be in his shop.

“It’s working,” he insisted.

“No, it’s not,” I replied. “I just tried it before I came down here. There’s no water.”

“Let me show you,” he said, walking toward the sink in his shop. He turned the valve and to my horror, water flowed out exuberantly.

“Yeah,” I said, “but that’s just water that’s already in the pipes. There’s no water in my apartment.”

“It’s fine,” he insisted. “Go back and check it again.” Meanwhile the water kept flowing out of the faucet. I could feel my embarrassment rising and hoped I wasn’t blushing.

Sure enough, I returned to my apartment and the water flowed almost as if nothing had happened. I felt foolish and could almost hear the pipes quietly snickering to themselves, “foolish gringo, hahaha!” It’s nasty when plumbing makes fun of you, but I figured this was to be my last insult. After all, how many times can this kind of weird, intermittent problem occur? And to me, who normally has such good mechanical Karma?

Ah, if only! Recently, my toilet flush valve started leaking. Intermittently, of course. Again I notified Rafael, who sent up his handyman, Arturo. Since I couldn’t see anything wrong with the valve, I persuaded myself and Arturo that the problem was the flush handle getting stuck against the tank lid. He duly replaced it. That was about six weeks ago. But it turns out that wasn’t the problem. So Arturo came back and looked again, and we both decided it really must be the valve. I felt rather foolish at having misdiagnosed the problem initially, but Arturo was too polite to comment. But he did go buy a valve. Meanwhile, actually installing the valve seems to have fallen by the wayside, and guess what? Now the toilet appeared to have fixed itself. But don’t tell anyone as they still think the valve needs to be replaced, and my plumbing credibility is hanging by a thread.

Oh, and I had an intermittent problem with the hot water too. Like in the middle of a shower, suddenly the hot water would slow to a trickle. Mind you, the cold still worked fine. That was such a weird problem even I couldn’t imagine what was wrong. Later, after my cold shower, I’d check the hot water and it’d be fine again. But now when I told Rafael, he didn’t believe me. “Maybe the hot water doesn’t like you,” he said, chuckling. It took me a week of hot/cold/hot showers to persuade him that I wasn’t imagining this problem. When he finally looked into it, he apologized and said I was right. That particular problem now seems to be fixed.

Then about a month ago, my shower started leaking. Not a lot, but definitely leaking. So, figuring I’d give Rafael all the facts and let him decide what to do, I stuck a bucket under it to measure the flow and then sent Rafael an e-mail: “my shower is leaking about 1.5 liters a day. I personally don’t really care if you fix it or not, but I’m letting you know.” I never heard back from him, figured he didn’t care about a small leak, so I resigned myself to a leaky shower.

Since I don’t particularly like to waste water, I left the bucket under the leak and started to use it to flush the toilet. But the sound of the dripping water began to annoy me, especially as the bucket in the shower stall created an odd sort of resonance, making the sound MUCH louder than anyone might imagine. And then, perhaps fortunately, the shower began to leak in earnest earlier this week. Now it was leaking 3 liters an hour, and even using the captured water to flush the toilet, a lot of it was ending up going down the drain. So this time I messaged Rafael on WhatsApp, and he agreed to send Arturo around on Monday.

So what’s happened since? Yesterday the shower fixed itself, and now it’s not leaking at all.

My trusty Canon 30D died a sudden death Sunday in the Plaza Grande of Pátzcuaro. He was eight years old and had taken 11,621 shots before he gave up the ghost. His sudden death came with little apparent warning, though with the benefit of hindsight, there were a few telltale signs of strain. The auto-focus had started to “hunt” a bit, not fixing quickly or firmly on a spot. The shutter release button took increasing force to activate, and the shutter lag lengthened. And just before he passed away, a bevy of “Error 99s” showed up on his screen, warning me that “It is not possible to take pictures at this time. Turn the camera off, or remove the battery, and try again.”

The exact moment of death came at approximately 6:30 PM, Sunday May 25th as I was trying to shoot a couple of young lovers against the smaller fountain, with the towers of the cathedral poking up behind the buildings lining the plaza. The stricken 30D emitted one last “Error 99” and then began a series of whirring sounds deep within his innards until I finally removed the battery for the last time in order to end his suffering.

The death was confirmed Monday morning via a conversation with a camera repairman in High Point, NC. When I described the symptoms, he said it was almost certainly a failed shutter block, basically my 30D’s heart. “You’re talking about a two or three hundred dollar repair,” he stated matter-of-factly. “The camera isn’t worth that much. Besides, it’s obsolete. For a bit more you could get a Rebel 5Ti, which will run circles around that camera in terms of image quality, ISO, and noise performance.” With sadness, I accepted this blow of fate, and knew that I’d have to move on.

My 30D was born and raised in Oita, Japan some time in 2006, learned English in his youth, and emigrated to the US shortly thereafter, and was brought lovingly into my home in November of that year by a devoted agent of UPS. There he replaced a Canon 20D (god rest his soul) which disappeared under suspicious (and tragic) circumstances during a trip to Rome, Italy in October of the same year. While 30D and I were together, I showered him with attention, upgrading his kit lens to a 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM lens, buying him a sporty, German polarizing filter, and stylish split neutral density filter. He was always coddled in a soft case, and over the years, I’ve also treated him to bigger and faster CF cards to store images. Nothing was too good for my 30D, and I have no regrets.

This trusty friend has been my tireless companion all over the world, from Boston to London, Toronto, San Francisco, all over Mexico, New York, Florida, and elsewhere. When no one else would go, 30D was always there. He has shot at least three weddings, many parties, many trips, and many, many buildings and plazas. Until his last moments, he faithfully snapped pictures whenever I wanted them, produced beautiful results, and never once complained until that final day in Pátzcuaro. Did it hurt to suffer an “Error 99?” Let’s all hope that the answer is no.

Upon return to Boston, a private interment cermony will be held in my back yard. May 30D forever rest in peace.

* * *

Though it’s sad that my trusty 30D has died, it’s uncanny how he managed to hold out until the end of my trip, and I think that speaks to both the devotion that camera showed me, and to my incredibly good luck on this entire trip. Since I left Boston, I have taken approximately 2,100 shots, and this trip would have been much poorer (and the blog more boring) had the camera died sooner. I do have a few new shots stuck on the CF card of Tehuacán, Morelia, and Pátzcuaro (now unretrievable until I buy a card reader), but I have plenty of shots both of Morelia and Pátzcuaro from my trip there in 2007. So I can (and likely will) write blog posts about them with photos. It’s odd, this is kind of bad luck, but I feel very fortunate that the camera held out as long as he did. That said, the only new pictures on the blog for a while will be from my cell phone.

* * *

As I write this, I’m in San Luis Potosí. I arrived Monday night after an approximately six-hour drive from Pátzcuaro.

View From My Hotel Window, San Luis Potosí

Because I’m supposed to shoot a friend’s wedding on Saturday June 7th, I’ve done little beyond wandering the plazas a bit and madly researching replacements for 30D. I’ll be here for another night yet. Then Thursday I’ll drive to Monterrey to hang out with Tino and Rodolfo in the evening. Friday finds me in Laredo, storing the truck, and getting ready to fly back to Boston on Saturday. Hopefully I’ll manage at least one more interesting post before I leave Mexico. In any case, I have more tales to tell of this trip, even though I’ll be back in Boston. Adios for now! Saludos!

As an avowed gadget addict, John Calypso of Viva Veracruz Blog, has recently issued a number of challenges to the blogging public. Or in the case of this blogger, a member of the former non-blogger community (hat tip to Gary Denness). John challenged his blogging friends first to post their computer workstations, which I have duly done.

Now, however, a bigger, brighter, bleached whiter gauntlet has been thrown down: laundry equipment. Now why exactly John wants to see other people’s cleaning hardware is difficult to fathom. Frankly, I haven’t had the nerve to ask. And who knows what’s next? Vacuums? Electrical panels? (Those living SOB would likely have some amusing photos to post.) Coffee grinders? (OK, that one has been done, at least by John.) Leaf blowers? Snow blowers? Oar rowers? (OK, those are people, not machines, but I thought it sounded entertaining.)

In any case, you can see my “equipment” at the top of the page. It lives in my rather dank basement, with myriad spiders and centipedes for company. Fortunately, due to my northern location, there are NO scorpions, thank God! The washer is a rather unassuming Maytag which was purchased new some years ago after its predecessor suddenly died. And it was purchased in a super-utilitarian way. I have no love for laundry equipment, and until now, didn’t much fear that people would judge me by it either. So when I needed a new machine, I picked up my Consumer Reports Buying Guide and picked out their best value, which came to about $300 (circa 2001), called around to various stores to see who had the best price (which turned out to be an independent dealer, well below Sears, Best Buy, Circuit City and the other chains), then went to the store in my little Toyota truck and bought the machine on the spot. It has served me well ever since, magically converting dirty laundry into wet, clean clothes.

The dryer has a more complicated history. It’s a gas-fired “Speed Queen,” a name I’ve always found appealing, and one that has been occasionally lobbed at me by friends in the passenger seat of my car. The dryer spent its formative years in Minneapolis, though not much more is known of its youth. I then purchased it used in the late 90’s from a former co-worker who had relocated to Boston and had no place to store it. I offered what I thought to be a fair price. Though he wasn’t particularly happy, he took it grumblingly. As it turned out, this dryer needed some work before it could be put into service, specifically the gas connections had to be redone, and this required the acquisition of various bits of odd plumbing, and a few hours of my own efforts to make it all work. But since then, it has performed flawlessly, if not speedily.

And in addition to drying my clothes, it also feeds a certain neurosis. At one point I read that the odds of a gas-fired dryer catching fire are meaningfully higher than for electric models. And if you’ve ever looked into the guts of a running gas dryer, you can see why, as it creates a small “tunnel of inferno” in order to operate. So I never run it when I’m not home, and I have a smoke detector right over it. But so far, so good, and the increased danger is offset by a lower operating cost. And that is, after all, the essence of living dangerously, isn’t it?

And in a small, but heartfelt tribute to my love of all things Mexican, it runs off an extension cord. Have at me, John Calypso!